ENTERTAINMENT

Jazz Fest gets $200K for live streaming on mobile app

Mark Stryker

Detroit Free Press Staff Writer

Coming soon to a phone near you: The 2016 Detroit Jazz Festival.

The 2015 Detroit Jazz Festival included a rare duet performance by legendary Detroit bassist Ron Carter and guitarist Pat Metheny. bring their first song to a close during the top of their performance at the 36th Annual Detroit Jazz Festival on Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015 on the Wayne State University Pyramid Stage in Hart Plaza. The festival is the largest free-of-charge jazz fest in the world.

The Detroit Jazz Festival has received a $200,000 grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to expand its current mobile app to provide live streaming of performances from the downtown festival beginning with this year's event on Labor Day weekend.

Festival spokesperson Steve Blow said details are still being worked out, including how much of the festival will be available, how it will be packaged and what the cost will be to consumers. But the idea is to offer audiences around the world real-time video broadcasts from the downtown stages at the festival. The festival's current app only provides basic information like the schedule, artist biographies and the like.

“The intention is to broaden the musical side of the festival," Blow said. "We don’t yet know the scope and breadth." Performances will only be streamed and not available as downloads for repeated listening.

Jazz Fest announces more headliners rooted in Detroit

The 37th annual Detroit Jazz Festival will be held Sept. 2-5 in downtown Detroit. Featuring about 70 national, local and student groups, the event remains the largest free-of-charge jazz festival in the world. The legendary Detroit-bred bassist Ron Carter is this year's artist-in-residence. Other headliners includes George Benson, the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, Jason Moran, Randy Weston, John Scofield, Roy Hargrove, Chris Potter, Stanley Cowell and Charles Tolliver.

The Detroit Jazz Festival Foundation, the producer of the event, is one of five jazz festivals (or their related organizations) across the country that will receive a combined $1 million on Wednesday from the Doris Duke foundation of New York. The foundation said in a statement that it chose these festivals for their "importance to the robustness of the jazz field."

Ron Carter named Detroit Jazz Fest artist-in-residence

Other grant winners are:

• City Parks Foundation for the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival in New York: $75,000 to investigate ways to digitally record the audio and visuals of performances, and research local and affordable rehearsal or informal performance spaces.

• Jazz Institute of Chicago of the Chicago Jazz Festival: $225,000 for staff dedicated to developing long-term streams of corporate and philanthropic support; forge collaborations with new local communities and advance the use of technology to streamline organizational processes.

• Monterey Jazz Festival in Monterey, Calif.: $400,000 to connect with younger and more ethnically diverse communities, evaluate impact of educational programs and develop new nonprofit and corporate relationships to support the festival.

• Newport Festivals Foundation of the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, R.I.: $100,000 to reinforce the festival’s relationships with artists, invite emerging artists to perform and commission new music.

Contact Mark Stryker: 313-222-6450 or mstryker@freepress.com